Dušan Pavlíček

A -globe: Agent Development Platform with Inaccessibility and Mobility Support

At present several Java-based multi-agent platforms from different developers are available, but none of them fully supports agent mobility and communication inaccessibility simulation. They are thus unsuitable for experiments with large scale real-world simulation. In this chapter we describe architecture of A-globe, fast, scalable and lightweight agent development platform with environmental simulation and mobility support. Beside the functions common to most agent platforms it provides a position-based messaging service, so it can be used for experiments with extensive environment simulation and communication inaccessibility. Simple benchmarks that compare the A-globe performance against other available agent platforms are also included.

Autonomous agents for air-traffic deconfliction

This contribution presents a deployment exercise of multi-agent technology in the domain of deconflicted air-traffic control among several autonomous aerial vehicles (manned as well as unmanned). Negotiation based deconfliction algorithm have been developed and integrated in the agent-based model of the individual flight. Operation of the underlying multi-agent system has been integrated with freely available, geographical and tactical data sources in order to demonstrate openness of the technology. An additional, web client visualization and access component has been developed in order to facilitate a multi-user, platform independent use of the system. The features and application design is illustrated in the demonstration video clip.

AGENTFLY: Towards Multi-Agent Technology in Free Flight Air Traffic Control

Ever rising deployment of Unmanned Aerial Assets (UAAs) in complex military and rescue operations require novel and innovative methods for intelligent planning and collision avoidance among a high number of heterogeneous, semi-trusted flying assets in well specified and constrained areas [1]. We have studied the free flight concept as an alternative to the classical, centralized traffic control. In free flight the unmanned aerial assets are provided with flight trajectory that has been elaborated without consideration of other flying objects that may occupy the same air space. The collision threads are detected by each of the aircraft individually and the collisions are avoided by an asset-to-asset negotiation. Multi-agent technology is very well suited as a technological platform for supporting the free-flight concept among the heterogeneous UAAs. In this chapter we present AGENTFLY, multi-agent system for free-flight simulation and flexible collision avoidance.

Deployment of A-globe multi-agent platform

A-globe [2, 1] is a freeware, simulation-oriented multi-agent platform featuring agent migration, communication inaccessibility simulation and high scalability with moderate hardware requirements. Using dedicated simulation messaging together with 2D and 3D visualization support, large agent systems can be engineered, tested and visualized on a single machine. A-globe agents are fully-fledged JAVA agents, each with its own independent thread, that can autonomously migrate between platforms running on different hosts. Thanks to the separation of simulation and agent code, deployment of agents to embedded devices is straightforward. The platform is not natively FIPA-compliant, as the inter-operability was sacrificed to offer superior scalability and efficiency.

Iterative accelerated A* path planning

The paper provides a description of an iterative version of the Accelerated A* algorithm for path planning and its application in the air traffic domain for airplanes with defined motion dynamics operating in the Earth-centered, Earth-fixed coordinate system (GPS) on a spherical model of the Earth constrained by the landscape and special use airspaces (SUA). The motion dynamics of the airplanes is modeled using the Base of Aircraft Data (BADA) airplane performance models. The presented algorithm provides an extension of the A* algorithm that significantly reduces the search space and makes planning of the flight trajectories computationally tractable.

Multi-agent-Based Diagnostics of Automotive Electronic Systems

The diagnostic system discussed in this paper provides an agent-based approach to advanced on-board diagnostics of operation and communication failures occurring in an electronic automotive system. To facilitate development and testing of agent-based automotive diagnostics, a software simulator of automotive electronics systems, also based on multi-agent technology, has been implemented, allowing the developers to simulate various automotive system failures. The paper presents both the proof-of-concept on-board diagnostics system and the simulation layer used for its development and testing. The following topics are covered: simulation of the hardware units, simulation of user-invoked hardware failures, distributed detection and diagnostics of the failures, and visualization. The proposed automotive diagnostics approach can be deployed on real automotive electronics hardware.